If you mean to represent great darkness, it must be done by contrasting it with great light; on the contrary, if you want to produce great brightness, you must oppose to it a very dark shade: so a pale yellow will cause red to appear more beautiful than if opposed to a purple colour.
There is another rule, by observing which, though you do not increase the natural beauty of the colours, yet by bringing them together they may give additional grace to each other, as green placed near red, while the effect would be quite the reverse, if placed near blue.
Harmony and grace are also produced by a judicious arrangement of colours, such as blue with pale yellow or white, and the like; as will be noticed in its place.
Chap. CCLXXII.—Of detaching the Figures.
Let the colours of which the draperies of your figures are composed, be such as to form a pleasing variety, to distinguish one from the other; and although, for the sake of harmony, they should be of the same nature[1], they must not stick together,
- ↑ I do not know a better comment on this passage than Felibien’s Examination of Le Brun’s Picture of the Tent of Darius. From this (which has been reprinted with an English translation, by Colonel Parsons in 1700, in folio) it will clearly appear, what the chain of connexion is between every colour there used, and its nearest neighbour, and consequently a rule may be formed from it with more certainty and precision than where the student is left to develope it for himself, from the mere inspection of different examples of colouring.
